BACCH4Mac Pro Edition - For those considering BACCH

[srrxr71]

I have read good things about those speakers and certainly there are other controlled directivity designs that probably work well also.

They are excellent in my opinion. I currently have a pair of 8341s the 8361s are simply for increased output. Apparently they ship tomorrow. Can’t wait.

 

[fredoamigo]

I do not know if I am wrong, but although BACCH works more or less well with all models of speakers although the preference is a narrow radiation. but in the context of speakers with wide radiation as here with ATC with the High End 2022 in Munich the positioning and especially the pinch of the speakers must be very pronounced with this type of speaker what could not force to be appropriate or not to please universally in the context of stereo listening. "standart "

 

[kthulhutu]

It is important to understand that the Toole/Harman conventional wisdom about speaker directivity in stereo/multichannel goes out the window with BACCH. Rather than constant directivity or smoothly changing directivity, maximum directivity is desirable with BACCH, and the best BACCH system I've heard was a system with Sanders electrostatic speakers in a highly absorptive room.

I use Dutch & Dutch 8Cs, which work very well with BACCH but have the advantage of working better than the Sanders speakers in conventional stereo--both in my opinion and per the Harman conventional wisdom.

I highly doubt electrostatic speakers in a dry room would sound good for any music other than live recordings, but each to their own.

 

[Dialectic]

I highly doubt electrostatic speakers in a dry room would sound good for any music other than live recordings, but each to their own.

That system (which also included a Velodyne subwoofer centered on the wall behind the loudspeakers) sounded horrendous without BACCH. With BACCH, it was the best system I've ever heard.

The Avantgarde speakers were not in use.

 

[kthulhutu]

That system (which also included a Velodyne subwoofer centered on the wall behind the loudspeakers) sounded horrendous without BACCH. With BACCH, it was the best system I've ever heard.

View attachment 240916

The Avantgarde speakers were not in use.

Really? I know BACCH's spatial effects are impressive but I don't see how it could make you ignore the awful tonality and complete dryness of the room. I personally would not want to compromise just for BACCH.

 

[Dialectic]

Really? I know BACCH's spatial effects are impressive but I don't see how it could make you ignore the awful tonality and complete dryness of the room. I personally would not want to compromise just for BACCH.

Yes, really. Most three dimensional imaging I've ever heard from any stereo or multichannel system, and the tonality was fine with BACCH engaged.

Nonetheless, it was intolerable without BACCH. That is why I don't own Sanders loudspeakers.

 

[kthulhutu]

Yes, really. Most three dimensional imaging I've ever heard from any stereo or multichannel system, and the tonality was fine with BACCH engaged.

Nonetheless, it was intolerable without BACCH. That is why I don't own Sanders loudspeakers.

May I ask what your XTC plot looks like? I'd expect a setup like the one shown to be achieving 20+ dB across the spectrum which is enough for more or less perfect imaging, but my Genelecs with 13 dB average and extremely high XTC in the bass are also quite seamlessly 3-dimensional with the right recordings, so I don't think you need to compromise that much to get the most out of BACCH.

 

[Dialectic]

May I ask what your XTC plot looks like? I'd expect a setup like the one shown to be achieving 20+ dB across the spectrum which is enough for more or less perfect imaging, but my Genelecs with 13 dB average and extremely high XTC in the bass are also quite seamlessly 3-dimensional with the right recordings, so I don't think you need to compromise that much to get the most out of BACCH.

That system was getting approximately 20 dB of cancellation.

I get 11-14 dB of cancellation with the 8Cs. (For whatever reason, I get a fair amount of run-to-run variation when making filters.) I have a lot of absorbers in my room, but the walls are not covered with them. Other than treating first reflection points, the biggest improvement from room treatment that I observed came from placing two GIK "gobos" together about four feet behind the listening seat.

 

[Gwreck]

That system (which also included a Velodyne subwoofer centered on the wall behind the loudspeakers) sounded horrendous without BACCH. With BACCH, it was the best system I've ever heard.

View attachment 240916

The Avantgarde speakers were not in use.

The Sanders sound great but the definitely have a limited sweet spot. I have a pair and they sound huge and spacious even without BACCH. They do sound dull outside of the small sweet spot. I also have the wall behind the electrostatic panel heavily treated to absorb the rear sound.

 

[kthulhutu]

That system was getting approximately 20 dB of cancellation.

I get 11-14 dB of cancellation with the 8Cs. (For whatever reason, I get a fair amount of run-to-run variation when making filters.) I have a lot of absorbers in my room, but the walls are not covered with them. Other than treating first reflection points, the biggest improvement from room treatment that I observed came from placing two GIK "gobos" together about four feet behind the listening seat.

Fair enough. I doubt there's anyone in my country (UK) with Sanders and BACCH that's willing to demo. I think Reflector Audio SQT is likely one of the best speakers you can get for BACCH and I would love to try it.
Your filter variance is likely caused by the fit of the mics, you will notice differences in the FR plot with different insertions, I found that shallow insertion with the mic part resting against the antitragus to be the best position.

 

[Gwreck]

May I ask what your XTC plot looks like? I'd expect a setup like the one shown to be achieving 20+ dB across the spectrum which is enough for more or less perfect imaging, but my Genelecs with 13 dB average and extremely high XTC in the bass are also quite seamlessly 3-dimensional with the right recordings, so I don't think you need to compromise that much to get the most out of BACCH.

I run sanders in a large basement family room that is fairly wide and deep. I use 4 inch acoustimac panels on the wall behind the speaker to absorb the rear sound. My crosstalk cancellation is 19-22db varying a bit with each measurement. The crosstalk is high but decreases about 200hz or so. With the right binaural recording I can definitely have sounds placed clearly behind me. One of the biggest issues I have the the quality of the cross talk cancellation is having a good quality head tracking. If the camera is not working well for whatever reason the imaging can jump around and is very distracting. I bought the intel IR camera and have not used it yet hopefully to improve nighttime head tracking.

I don’t have access to a screen shot currently. When I’m not at work I can get a shot. Another thing if forgot is that Running the sanders with the ICX fireface using the BACCH crossover module has improved the crosstalk cancellation and sound quality a fair bit.

 

[Gwreck]

I do not know if I am wrong, but although BACCH works more or less well with all models of speakers although the preference is a narrow radiation. but in the context of speakers with wide radiation as here with ATC with the High End 2022 in Munich the positioning and especially the pinch of the speakers must be very pronounced with this type of speaker what could not force to be appropriate or not to please universally in the context of stereo listening. "standart "

Dr Choueri says that narrow directivity works best but acoustic treatments can make up for the difference with broader dispersion speakers. This is not an exact quote.

 

[kthulhutu]

I run sanders in a large basement family room that is fairly wide and deep. I use 4 inch acoustimac panels on the wall behind the speaker to absorb the rear sound. My crosstalk cancellation is 19-22db varying a bit with each measurement. The crosstalk is high but decreases about 200hz or so. With the right binaural recording I can definitely have sounds placed clearly behind me. One of the biggest issues I have the the quality of the cross talk cancellation is having a good quality head tracking. If the camera is not working well for whatever reason the imaging can jump around and is very distracting. I bought the intel IR camera and have not used it yet hopefully to improve nighttime head tracking.

I don’t have access to a screen shot currently. When I’m not at work I can get a shot. Another thing if forgot is that Running the sanders with the ICX fireface using the BACCH crossover module has improved the crosstalk cancellation and sound quality a fair bit.

Ahhh I understand. BACCH has a built-in preset for Sanders 10 including EQ. This explains why they went from unlistenable to amazing once BACCH was turned on.
I also noticed substantial improvement in bass and lower mids XTC once I measured with an audiolense FIR filter correcting frequency and time domain close to perfection.

 

[fredoamigo]

Dr Choueri says that narrow directivity works best but acoustic treatments can make up for the difference with broader dispersion speakers. This is not an exact quote.

I don't want to do any horizontal "over treatment" with my speakers especially since they don't have a very wide directivity but a relatively narrow one (jbl 4367). My question was mainly about the ideal pinch/positioning with BACCH and I noticed on the numerous photos of listening with BACCH that generally it is really very pronounced and the speakers are very close to each other...is this a coincidence on the photos? or simply the best and most efficient listening situation with BACCH?

 

[Dialectic]

I don't want to do any horizontal "over treatment" with my speakers especially since they don't have a very wide directivity but a relatively narrow one (jbl 4367). My question was mainly about the ideal pinch/positioning with BACCH and I noticed on the numerous photos of listening with BACCH that generally it is really very pronounced and the speakers are very close to each other...is this a coincidence on the photos? or simply the best and most efficient listening situation with BACCH?

Early versions of BACCH benefited from narrow placement. That is not the case with current versions.

The photo I provided of the Sanders/BACCH system was from 2015. That listening session, I believe, predated any FR or xover filters for the Sanders loudspeakers within the BACCH software; those filters came much later, if I recall correctly.

 

[kthulhutu]

I don't want to do any horizontal "over treatment" with my speakers especially since they don't have a very wide directivity but a relatively narrow one (jbl 4367). My question was mainly about the ideal pinch/positioning with BACCH and I noticed on the numerous photos of listening with BACCH that generally it is really very pronounced and the speakers are very close to each other...is this a coincidence on the photos? or simply the best and most efficient listening situation with BACCH?

I've spoken with Choeuri about this and the "stereo-dipole" setup is an artefact of older XTC ventures. With personalized BACCH filters, you can have your speakers at very wide or narrow angles and still get good, undistorted sound. In fact, one of the advantages of BACCH is that it makes wide setups non-fatiguing and eases the spatial distortion (useful for me because I have my speakers pretty close to the sidewalls to avoid nulls).

 

[Gwreck]

I don't want to do any horizontal "over treatment" with my speakers especially since they don't have a very wide directivity but a relatively narrow one (jbl 4367). My question was mainly about the ideal pinch/positioning with BACCH and I noticed on the numerous photos of listening with BACCH that generally it is really very pronounced and the speakers are very close to each other...is this a coincidence on the photos? or simply the best and most efficient listening situation with BACCH?

Actually the way BACCH works you can have speakers in non symmetric locations and it will still be fine. It is not super specific like using sonic holography. The in ear mics allow the system to adjust for speaker position or the intro edition one just inputs measured the relative speaker locations or does it by ear. Don’t quote me please but I’m pretty sure Dr Choueri said he puts the speakers in a traditional configuration as it makes audiophiles happy. I also imagine that being in the optimal listen widow for each speaker helps(especially ESL’s).

I have actually used BACCH on an NAD VISO-1(if you know what that is you will laugh) while it did not create a true binaural experience the sound field was well defined several feet out from each side of the device. It sounded like a nice set of bookshelves with excellent imaging.

When the Jambox Bluetooth speaker was around it implemented a fixed version of BACCH which was called LIVE AUDIO and actually was pretty good especially considering the modest quality of the speaker.

Any of this may be wrong.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

The Sanders sound great but the definitely have a limited sweet spot. I have a pair and they sound huge and spacious even without BACCH. They do sound dull outside of the small sweet spot. I also have the wall behind the electrostatic panel heavily treated to absorb the rear sound.

one of the reasons I’m still considering the considerable upgrade from the intro version of BACCH is that the next level up has head tracking. This would remove the ”problem” of the Sander’s limited sweet spot

 

[Gwreck]

one of the reasons I’m still considering the considerable upgrade from the intro version of BACCH is that the next level up has head tracking. This would remove the ”problem” of the Sander’s limited sweet spot

It definitely helps with that but still a one person speaker(which I am perfectly ok with that lol)

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

It definitely helps with that but still a one person speaker(which I am perfectly ok with that lol)

Yep same here!